Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

Eli Glinn was waiting for the morgue vehicle at the anonymous door to the EES building. Sending someone to deal with the vehicle, he whisked Pendergast off for a shower and change of clothes and assigned D’Agosta to a robotically silent, white-coated technician. The technician had D’Agosta wait while he made a few brief phone calls; then he led the way through the cavernous, echoing space that comprised the heart of the Effective Engineering Solutions building. The large room was quiet, as one would expect at half past seven on a weeknight: even so, several scientists could be seen scribbling on whiteboards or peering at computer monitors, amidst an air of studious efficiency. As he walked past the lab tables, the scientific equipment, and the models, he wondered just how many of the employees knew that their building currently harbored one of the fed’s top fugitives.

D’Agosta followed the technician into a waiting elevator in the rear wall. The man inserted a key into a control panel and pressed the down button. The car descended for a surprisingly long interval before the doors opened onto a pale blue corridor. Motioning D’Agosta to follow, the technician strode down it, stopping at last before a door. He smiled, nodded, then turned and walked back in the direction of the elevator.

D’Agosta stared at the retreating form. Then he glanced back at the unmarked door. After a moment, he gave a tentative knock.

It was immediately opened by a short, cheerful-looking man with a florid face and a closely cropped beard. He ushered D’Agosta in and closed the door behind him.

“You are Lieutenant D’Agosta, yes?” he asked in an accent D’Agosta assumed to be German. “Please have a seat. I am Dr. Rolf Krasner.”

The office had the spare, clinical air of a doctor’s consultation room, with gray carpets, white walls, and anonymous furnishings. A rosewood table stood in the middle, brilliantly polished. In its center sat what looked like a technical manual-thick as the Manhattan telephone book and bound in black plastic. Eli Glinn had already wheeled himself into position at the far side of the table. He nodded silently to D’Agosta and gestured toward an empty chair.

As D’Agosta seated himself, a door in the back of the room opened and Pendergast appeared. His wounds had been freshly dressed and his hair, still damp from being washed, had been combed back. He was dressed, most incongruously, in a white turtleneck and gray wool pants, which-different as they were from his habitual black suit-almost had the effect of a disguise.

D’Agosta rose instinctively.

Pendergast’s eyes met his, and after a moment he smiled. “I fear I neglected to express my gratitude to you for freeing me from prison.”

“You know you don’t have to do that,” said D’Agosta, coloring.

“But I will. Thank you very much, my dear Vincent.” He spoke softly, taking D’Agosta’s hand in his own and giving it a curt shake. D’Agosta felt strangely moved by this man who sometimes found even the simplest human courtesies awkward.

“Please sit down,” said Glinn in the same neutral voice-devoid of any human feeling-that had so annoyed D’Agosta on their first meeting.

He complied. Pendergast slipped into a seat opposite-a little stiffly, D’Agosta thought, yet with his usual feline grace. “And I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to you as well, Mr. Glinn,” Pendergast went on. “A most successful operation.”

Glinn nodded curtly.

“Although I deeply regret having to kill Mr. Lacarra to do so.”

“As you know,” Glinn replied, “there was no other way. You had to kill an inmate in order to escape in his body bag, and that inmate, furthermore, had to take his exercise in yard 4, the ideal spot for an abortive escape. We were fortunate-if I may be permitted that expression-to identify a yard 4 inmate who was so thoroughly evil that some might say he deserved to die: a man who tortured three children to death in front of their mother. It was then a simple matter to hack into the Justice Department database and change Lacarra’s arrest records to identify him as one of your ‘collars’-thus baiting the trap for Coffey. Finally, I might point out that you were forced to kill him: it was self-defense.”

“No amount of sophistry will change the fact it was a premeditated killing.”

“Strictly speaking, you are correct. But as you know yourself, his death was necessary to save more lives-perhaps many more lives. And our model indicated his death sentence appeals would have been denied, anyway.”

Pendergast silently inclined his head.

“Now, Mr. Pendergast, let us lay trivial ethical dilemmas aside. We have urgent business to take care of, relating to your brother. I assume no news from the outside world reached you while in solitary confinement?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Then it would be a surprise to learn that your brother destroyed all the diamonds he stole from the museum.”

D’Agosta saw Pendergast stiffen visibly.

“That’s right. Diogenes pulverized the diamonds and returned them to the museum as a sack of powder.”

After a silence, Pendergast said, “Once again, his actions were beyond my ability to predict or comprehend.”

“If it’s any consolation to you, they surprised us as well. It meant our assumptions about him were wrong. We believed that after being cheated of Lucifer’s Heart-the one diamond he most desired-your brother would go to ground for a period, lick his wounds, plot his next move. Clearly, that was not the case.”

Krasner broke in, his cheerful voice in stark contrast to Glinn’s monotone. “By destroying the very diamonds he had spent many years planning to steal, diamonds that he both desired and needed, Diogenes was destroying a part of himself. It was a suicide of sorts. He was abandoning himself to his demons.”

“When we learned what happened to the diamonds,” Glinn went on, “we realized our preliminary psychological profile was woefully insufficient. And so we went back to the drawing board, reanalyzed existing data, gathered additional information. That is the result.” He nodded to the thick volume. “I’ll spare you the details. It boils down to one thing.”

“And that is?”

“The ‘perfect crime’ which Diogenes spoke of was not the theft of the diamonds. Nor was it the outrage he perpetrated on you: killing your friends and then framing you for the crimes. Whatever his original intent was we are in no position to speculate. But the fact remains that his ultimate crime has yet to be committed.”

“But the date in his letter?”

“Another lie, or at least diversion. The theft of the diamonds was part of his plan, but their destruction was apparently a more spontaneous act. That doesn’t change the fact that his series of crimes was carefully planned to keep you occupied, to mislead you, to stay one step ahead of you. I must say, the depth and complexity of your brother’s plan is quite breathtaking.”

“So the crime is yet to come,” Pendergast said in a dry, quiet voice. “Do you know what it is, or when it will take place?”

“No-except that all indications are that this crime is imminent. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps tonight. Hence the need for your immediate liberation from Herkmoor.”

Pendergast was silent a moment. “I fail to see how I can be of any help,” he said, his voice tinged with bitterness. “As you see, I’ve been wrong at every turn.”

“Agent Pendergast, you are the one person-the only person-who can help. And you know how.”

When Pendergast did not immediately respond, Glinn went on. “We had hoped our forensic profile would have predictive power-that it would provide a sense of what Diogenes’s future action would be. And it has… to a point. We know he’s motivated by a powerful feeling of victimization, the sense that a terrible wrong was done to him. We believe his ‘perfect crime’ will attempt to perpetrate a similar wrong on a large number of people.”